Amiga trademark legal battle escalates

Amiga-news.de website has published a short note about the development of the Amiga trademark battle that has been happening for some time now. This time, Hyperion is suing Amiga Inc., Itec, and Cloanto. Since the documents are not publicly available yet, it is not possible to know what Hyperion is claiming. The only information is about the defendants:

Amiga, Inc. Delaware (formerly known as KMOS)

Amino Development Corporation (the former Amiga Inc. Washington)

Cloanto Corporation, the US offshoot of Cloanto

Itec LLC, a former investor in Amiga Washington

It is too bad that things like this happen, but if any of the parties have the rights to use the Amiga trademark, it is fair that they pursue legal actions. I personally think that the Amiga brand is strong in the hearts of old school enthusiasts and collectors and this is what matters most. 🙂

4 Responses

for me it is important that there has to be a legal rightsholder that has a sensible understanding what to do with the brand.
if you look at “the c64”. it is a shitty console with a fake keyboard in it, that has nothing to do with the old c64. they just want to rip off people.
the rightsholder of the brand commodore did not give them the license to sell it as a commodore c64.
but the same rightsholder gave the ok to sell the new c64II cases in different nice colors (grey, sx-64 style etc.) where the old original molds are being used.

Well put, Funkmaster! Hopefully, Commodore Is Awesome shares this standpoint, too. The “The C64” is, unlike dedicated projects like the C64 Reloaded , basically a Raspberry Pi-esque software emulator which has nothing in common with the genuine Commodore hardware the world deserves. Here’s hoping you’ll promote the latter and demote the former!

For clarification, the Hyperion mentioned is Hyperion Entertainment, for those who may not know.

They claim, on the news section of their website since December of last year, “that on the basis of the aforementioned stipulated judgment it has the worldwide exclusive right to distribute and sublicense AmigaOS on a standalone basis or bundled with hardware (OEM license), either on a physical medium (such as a ROM or DVD) or electronically (digital download).”

It is frustrating that legal battles continue to plague old Amiga and Commodore trademarks.
It is equally frustrating that most of the companies that have had the rights to the brand, have tried to use it only to make a quick buck by making bad products without soul where they just slap on a retro logo, sometimes they do not even bother to give it a retro look and makes due with a retro logo.

I could give many examples, but won’t.

MY hope was that CUSA could have somehow created a NG Amiga, but their own greed and lack of vision, meant that they decided to be too greedy and that they decided to forego coorporation with the AROS and AEROS teams… instead they made a very puny reskinned version of an old linux mint and claimed they had made a commodore os, the so-called commodore vision os… idiotic…

I think that CUSA could have had great success as an AROS PC brand… IF they had had just a tiny amount of vision…